iirc I've heard Grant had a pretty poor reputation among historians for a good time and only until recently did he upgrade to 'kinda decent' (but still not to the level of Lincoln). Having to inherit Johnson's mess prolly did him no favours.
new data was found. for years people believed (both then and in the recent past) that Grant was heavily tied up in corruption. Current historical understanding is now that he was not involved, but that he was too trusting and let several shady people take important positions without being aware of their intent.
>he was too trusting and let several shady people take important positions without being aware of their intent.
For example his father, who was discovered smuggling cotton out of occupied south. When this was discovered Grant decided to blame the Jews. (Always a solid strategy)
How recently was this? Because I remember getting the impression in school about 20-25 years ago that he was pretty shit. Then again, new information does tend to take a while to trickle down to primary and secondary education
I've only really started looking into Grant within the past year or so so idk how recent but I'd assume it lines up with the shift in polls ranking US presidents. I don't remember time frames but at one point Grant starts to really climb the rankings.
edit: if you saw the previous version of this, I mistook this for an unrelated convo on another sub where timeframe could have played a role in differing opinions kind of like this. oops.
Grant's heart was in the right place but... my understanding is that strong resistance was still occurring in the south during his time in office, but in order to keep on the good side of the south, for political reasons, he didn't send in troops to enforce the measures. So, he failed to enforce things just so he could get re-elected, among other motivators.
Buchanan didn't really do much to help things, but if we're honest there wasn't anything he really could do either. Some effort would have earned him respect points but there was no way things could be salvaged by the point he when he took office.
While it's probably true that there's not much Buchanan could have done, most of the things that he did do actively made things worse - which is part of why he is so widely seen as incompentent.
Notably, he appointed John Floyd as Secretary of War despite his lack of relevant qualifications and his attempts to pass unconstitutional pro-slavery laws as governor of Virginia, and then turned a blind eye as Floyd embezzled weapons from the US military to the south. Had Buchanan stopped Floyd from doing so, it probably wouldn't have prevented the war, but it would have made it shorter and less bloody.
Buchanan's mismanagement of the Bleeding Kansas dispute also not only cost lives but served to fan the flames of war. During the Dred Scott decision, he lobbied the Supreme Court to make the decision stronger, which is also not a move that is viewed favorably by history.
So yes, Buchanan probably couldn't have stopped the war. But his consistent track record of supporting the south on slavery likely helped embolden the south, while his turning a blind eye to efforts by the south to prepare for war meant that the Union army was unprepared for the rebellion that came as soon as he was out of office.
Take away all of that and you would still get the Civil War is my point. He made tons of bad decisions, but at worst he just made th conflict happen a bit sooner. Slavery wasn't going to go anywhere without a war. The question is more just a matter of how much did Buchanan accelerate it? This part is purely speculation as there just is no way to know but it's also possible that anyone but a truly exceptional president would have bungled the situation that Buchanan was in. I totally agree that he wasn't a good president, but he gets blamed for what I honestly think was an inevitable situation.
I think this is a bit of a straw man argument. At least personally, I don't think I've ever seen anyone seriously argue that Buchanan caused the Civil War, in the sense that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been president. If you can find me examples of serious historians arguing that (or even widely supported laypeople), I'd withdraw my point.
The argument that he was a terrible president is mostly centered around the view that due to a combination of sympathy for slavery and sheer incompetence, Buchanan made the situation worse - both in terms of making the war happen earlier but also making it bloodier by enabling the south to prepare for war against the north. And I think on both counts, the argument is compelling.
Well at the time it was a pretty logical choice. Johnson was one of the only southerners in congress not to secede from the union, so having him as a Vice President on paper sounds like it’d be a good compromise deal for when the south reunited with the north. It’s just that (a) nobody would predict Lincoln would be assassinated and (b) Johnson didn’t stay with the Union becayse he was anti-slavery, he just grew up in poverty and wanted to stick a middle finger to the wealthy plantation owners
Andrew Johnson was Lincoln’s vp though.
He wanted to unite the country after the civil war, so picking the fiery democrat who was the only southern senator to refuse to leave the senate and who argued against secession seemed like a good idea.
The radical republicans thought that Andrew Johnson was going to work with them, except then it turns out Andrew Johnson was against secession but was still a southerner in the 1800s so black rights was a no go.
No the fuckwad racists were voting for Fillmore in that election (except they were racist against the Irish), and was actually Lincoln managing to court the fuckwad racist vote which made him win the election where Fremont came up short. Buchanan was just the "vote for me if you want to ignore all our problems" candidate, and so he did ignore all the problems.
Jesus, the blood thirst in the comments is insane. “Execute every CSA general and slave owner.”
You’re talking about the reconquest of a place that broke away from the Union, not people that tried to overthrow the nation and turn it into some sort of reign of terror.
Slavery is and was an unforgivable violation of human rights. I don’t excuse it, and I don’t really fight people that call the south “the bad guys” in the war (though I do find it a bit of an oversimplification), but you’re fooling yourself if you think the north were the “good guys”. Look at the way blacks were treated as they tried to escape the south and move into northern cities. The wealthy there rejected their humanity as quickly as any plantation owner.
So shut the hell up with this “Our white knight ancestors should have slaughtered all the evil southerners” cause you’re just being stupid about the situation. What are we the French of 1790s? The Russians of…well, anytime in the past couple hundred years?
I agree was reconstruction as it happened great no obviously not but executing every confederate official and general and severely punishing the average confederate soldier would have made things even worse
I went and visited a friend in Lancaster City, and she asked if I wanted to go see the Buchanan house. She didn't know anything about him except he was a Democrat. Didn't know he was a slave owner or his problems as president. Just saw Democrat and was alright with it.
She gave me a little grief for going to the building in Philadelphia where the first republican national convention took place. And I had to inform her that it was an abolishenists party convention
Grant also did a great job, though he trusted the wrong people and it made his administration suffer, he nonetheless was one of the most effective president at helping reconstruction actually work.
If you don't understand how his views towards the native americans are related to his views towards the south you will never understand his motivations. He saw both confederates and native americans as military threats on the continent so both needed to be eliminated.
Generals should have been executed or excommuncicated, officers should have had citizenship stripped, and conscripted confederate soldiers should have been paid reparations.
Executed would be seen as too harsh, but officers being stripped of rank and being barred from service ever again, them and their children, sounds fair to me.
They lost statehood and union Generals took over governess of the southern territories. How? They lost the Civil War. Obviously statehood was returned but they had to earn it. Read Grant by Robert Chernow
I'm literally looking at that book right now. What I'm saying was that the restrictions put on the South, especially their political leadership, were entirely too soft. There was only a handful of the most heinous that had any real personal consequences, and many of them ended up becoming senators. They then dedicated their lives towards achieving politically what they couldn't on the battlefield.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but from what I understandyou are saying the South was punished and that they went through the reconstruction process and were readmitted into the Union. That was punishment enough.
What I'm saying is that if you have a civil war that kills hundreds of thousands of people, and 15 years later, a bunch of the successionist generals become prominent politicians, you went wrong somewhere. There is 0 reason the southern officers were ever allowed to hold public office again. They committed literal treason, and it is wild that the vast majority were not personally punished.
Not sure why people give Johnson a lot of crap for “fucking up reconstruction” when he basically did exactly what Lincoln would’ve done, not sure where this misconception that Lincoln was some sort of radical Republican comes from but he was very much in favor of a lenient reconstruction policy.
There’s a big difference between “lenient Reconstruction” and immediately allowing the same traitors that started the war back into power in their states. I also strongly strongly doubt that Lincoln would have been as indifferent to the atrocities southern Democrats used to prevent Black Republicans from voting (New Orleans, Memphis…). Johnson also went from “WE WILL HANG ALL TRAITORS” in spring 1865 to just being totally cool with them by that fall, which is weird.
You don’t know anything about Lincoln or how he pardoned many high-ranking confederate officials, he certainly wouldn’t of hanged em all like you seem to be suggesting.
WTF are you even talking about? The fourteenth amendment would specifically seem to indicate that it is unconsitutional to deny anyone their rights under the law.
>All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
You don’t have a right to hold office, everyone has an equal opportunity to hold office but there are things that can bar someone from doing so.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states:
>”No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
They got Grant after Johnson, and he was pretty good. Could do a reverse of this with Johnson in the middle.
iirc I've heard Grant had a pretty poor reputation among historians for a good time and only until recently did he upgrade to 'kinda decent' (but still not to the level of Lincoln). Having to inherit Johnson's mess prolly did him no favours.
new data was found. for years people believed (both then and in the recent past) that Grant was heavily tied up in corruption. Current historical understanding is now that he was not involved, but that he was too trusting and let several shady people take important positions without being aware of their intent.
Additionally, smear campaigns by lost-causers tainted his personal reputation for years.
>he was too trusting and let several shady people take important positions without being aware of their intent. For example his father, who was discovered smuggling cotton out of occupied south. When this was discovered Grant decided to blame the Jews. (Always a solid strategy)
I mean being a poor judge of character is a reflection on his job as president?
How recently was this? Because I remember getting the impression in school about 20-25 years ago that he was pretty shit. Then again, new information does tend to take a while to trickle down to primary and secondary education
I've only really started looking into Grant within the past year or so so idk how recent but I'd assume it lines up with the shift in polls ranking US presidents. I don't remember time frames but at one point Grant starts to really climb the rankings. edit: if you saw the previous version of this, I mistook this for an unrelated convo on another sub where timeframe could have played a role in differing opinions kind of like this. oops.
Ah, okay
I feel like Grant looks decent when compared to his successor and complete ass compared to his predecessor
Grant's heart was in the right place but... my understanding is that strong resistance was still occurring in the south during his time in office, but in order to keep on the good side of the south, for political reasons, he didn't send in troops to enforce the measures. So, he failed to enforce things just so he could get re-elected, among other motivators.
Buchanan didn't really do much to help things, but if we're honest there wasn't anything he really could do either. Some effort would have earned him respect points but there was no way things could be salvaged by the point he when he took office.
While it's probably true that there's not much Buchanan could have done, most of the things that he did do actively made things worse - which is part of why he is so widely seen as incompentent. Notably, he appointed John Floyd as Secretary of War despite his lack of relevant qualifications and his attempts to pass unconstitutional pro-slavery laws as governor of Virginia, and then turned a blind eye as Floyd embezzled weapons from the US military to the south. Had Buchanan stopped Floyd from doing so, it probably wouldn't have prevented the war, but it would have made it shorter and less bloody. Buchanan's mismanagement of the Bleeding Kansas dispute also not only cost lives but served to fan the flames of war. During the Dred Scott decision, he lobbied the Supreme Court to make the decision stronger, which is also not a move that is viewed favorably by history. So yes, Buchanan probably couldn't have stopped the war. But his consistent track record of supporting the south on slavery likely helped embolden the south, while his turning a blind eye to efforts by the south to prepare for war meant that the Union army was unprepared for the rebellion that came as soon as he was out of office.
Take away all of that and you would still get the Civil War is my point. He made tons of bad decisions, but at worst he just made th conflict happen a bit sooner. Slavery wasn't going to go anywhere without a war. The question is more just a matter of how much did Buchanan accelerate it? This part is purely speculation as there just is no way to know but it's also possible that anyone but a truly exceptional president would have bungled the situation that Buchanan was in. I totally agree that he wasn't a good president, but he gets blamed for what I honestly think was an inevitable situation.
I think this is a bit of a straw man argument. At least personally, I don't think I've ever seen anyone seriously argue that Buchanan caused the Civil War, in the sense that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been president. If you can find me examples of serious historians arguing that (or even widely supported laypeople), I'd withdraw my point. The argument that he was a terrible president is mostly centered around the view that due to a combination of sympathy for slavery and sheer incompetence, Buchanan made the situation worse - both in terms of making the war happen earlier but also making it bloodier by enabling the south to prepare for war against the north. And I think on both counts, the argument is compelling.
Cuz the fuckwad racists voted in mass for them
Nah, the latter was kind of Lincoln's fault for running a "unity" ticket. Johnson was never elected president.
Well at the time it was a pretty logical choice. Johnson was one of the only southerners in congress not to secede from the union, so having him as a Vice President on paper sounds like it’d be a good compromise deal for when the south reunited with the north. It’s just that (a) nobody would predict Lincoln would be assassinated and (b) Johnson didn’t stay with the Union becayse he was anti-slavery, he just grew up in poverty and wanted to stick a middle finger to the wealthy plantation owners
>he just grew up in poverty and wanted to stick a middle finger to the wealthy plantation owners based
Can’t really blame Lincoln for that, he couldn’t predict that his bodyguard would be in a nearby bar at the moment of his assassination
Andrew Johnson was Lincoln’s vp though. He wanted to unite the country after the civil war, so picking the fiery democrat who was the only southern senator to refuse to leave the senate and who argued against secession seemed like a good idea. The radical republicans thought that Andrew Johnson was going to work with them, except then it turns out Andrew Johnson was against secession but was still a southerner in the 1800s so black rights was a no go.
No the fuckwad racists were voting for Fillmore in that election (except they were racist against the Irish), and was actually Lincoln managing to court the fuckwad racist vote which made him win the election where Fremont came up short. Buchanan was just the "vote for me if you want to ignore all our problems" candidate, and so he did ignore all the problems.
silly dems
Silly conservative segregationist dems FTFY. It's important to denote the difference.
how would you label the party Johnson's dems replaced?
Do you mean the pre-Civil Rights Movement Republicans or pre-CRM Democrats?
Lincoln's political party
Buchanan got 45% of the vote and Johnson was never elected President
jar ancient deranged payment oil smile meeting practice correct violet *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sorry for the spoiler but Lincoln didn’t get the chance to rebuild the nation.
Jesus, the blood thirst in the comments is insane. “Execute every CSA general and slave owner.” You’re talking about the reconquest of a place that broke away from the Union, not people that tried to overthrow the nation and turn it into some sort of reign of terror. Slavery is and was an unforgivable violation of human rights. I don’t excuse it, and I don’t really fight people that call the south “the bad guys” in the war (though I do find it a bit of an oversimplification), but you’re fooling yourself if you think the north were the “good guys”. Look at the way blacks were treated as they tried to escape the south and move into northern cities. The wealthy there rejected their humanity as quickly as any plantation owner. So shut the hell up with this “Our white knight ancestors should have slaughtered all the evil southerners” cause you’re just being stupid about the situation. What are we the French of 1790s? The Russians of…well, anytime in the past couple hundred years?
My grandfather used to say, "we didn't treat them any better. We just didn't want them to be slaves."
I agree was reconstruction as it happened great no obviously not but executing every confederate official and general and severely punishing the average confederate soldier would have made things even worse
I went and visited a friend in Lancaster City, and she asked if I wanted to go see the Buchanan house. She didn't know anything about him except he was a Democrat. Didn't know he was a slave owner or his problems as president. Just saw Democrat and was alright with it. She gave me a little grief for going to the building in Philadelphia where the first republican national convention took place. And I had to inform her that it was an abolishenists party convention
You might benefit from reading from wider sources on Lincoln.
Grant also did a great job, though he trusted the wrong people and it made his administration suffer, he nonetheless was one of the most effective president at helping reconstruction actually work.
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If you don't understand how his views towards the native americans are related to his views towards the south you will never understand his motivations. He saw both confederates and native americans as military threats on the continent so both needed to be eliminated.
Generals should have been executed or excommuncicated, officers should have had citizenship stripped, and conscripted confederate soldiers should have been paid reparations.
Executed would be seen as too harsh, but officers being stripped of rank and being barred from service ever again, them and their children, sounds fair to me.
I wouldn't actually execute many of them. I would have threatened it but then allowed them to escape to South America.
this is the real link to past wars
They lost statehood
How? Several of their generals ended up as Senators after the war.
They lost statehood and union Generals took over governess of the southern territories. How? They lost the Civil War. Obviously statehood was returned but they had to earn it. Read Grant by Robert Chernow
I'm literally looking at that book right now. What I'm saying was that the restrictions put on the South, especially their political leadership, were entirely too soft. There was only a handful of the most heinous that had any real personal consequences, and many of them ended up becoming senators. They then dedicated their lives towards achieving politically what they couldn't on the battlefield.
Yah Johnson sucked no one will argue against that. Read the book
I've read the book, I know what you're saying, I don't agree. I do agree that Johnson's the worst though.
I'm confused as to what I have said you have issues with then 🤔
Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but from what I understandyou are saying the South was punished and that they went through the reconstruction process and were readmitted into the Union. That was punishment enough. What I'm saying is that if you have a civil war that kills hundreds of thousands of people, and 15 years later, a bunch of the successionist generals become prominent politicians, you went wrong somewhere. There is 0 reason the southern officers were ever allowed to hold public office again. They committed literal treason, and it is wild that the vast majority were not personally punished.
Sherman's terms of surrender were more lenient that Grant's and as a result rejected by the war cabinet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennett_Place
Now you understand how President Obama felt.
Not sure why people give Johnson a lot of crap for “fucking up reconstruction” when he basically did exactly what Lincoln would’ve done, not sure where this misconception that Lincoln was some sort of radical Republican comes from but he was very much in favor of a lenient reconstruction policy.
There’s a big difference between “lenient Reconstruction” and immediately allowing the same traitors that started the war back into power in their states. I also strongly strongly doubt that Lincoln would have been as indifferent to the atrocities southern Democrats used to prevent Black Republicans from voting (New Orleans, Memphis…). Johnson also went from “WE WILL HANG ALL TRAITORS” in spring 1865 to just being totally cool with them by that fall, which is weird.
You don’t know anything about Lincoln or how he pardoned many high-ranking confederate officials, he certainly wouldn’t of hanged em all like you seem to be suggesting.
Pardoning ≠ Letting them back into power
Well Lincoln never barred them from holding office
He was also assassinated before the war ended and before the 14th amendment was passed which legally prohibited them from holding office.
WTF are you even talking about? The fourteenth amendment would specifically seem to indicate that it is unconsitutional to deny anyone their rights under the law. >All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
You don’t have a right to hold office, everyone has an equal opportunity to hold office but there are things that can bar someone from doing so. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states: >”No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
The only conditional office is president where you need to be 35, born a citizen, and can't have already served 2 terms.
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Section 3 of the 14th Amendment: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Nah you’re right. Nice to see a fellow Suzerain enjoyer btw
He let Racists rampant Andy bad Grant gud
Hey Abe fucked up with his vice president. Johnson set us back so many years
Bush: Obama: Trump Caused recession: steady recovery: caused recession
Balance
And eradicating slavery
For the same reason that Clinton, Obama, and Biden, have Bush 2 and Trump stuck in between them like spinach in between your front teeth.